City of Bones
by Believe in the Unknown
Summary: When seventeen year old Lucy heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder - much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else. What will happen? R&R.
1. Chapter 1

**No One's POV**

You've _got_ to be kidding me," The bouncer said, crossing his muscular arms over his broad chest. "You can't bring that in here." Fifty or so teenagers inline outside the Pandemonium Club leaned forward to eavesdrop. It was a long wait to get in the all ages club, especially on a Sunday, and not much generally happened in line. The bouncers were fierce and would come down instantly on anyone who looked like they were going start trouble. Seventeen year old Lucy Heartfilia, standing in line with her best friend, Natsu, leaned forward along with everyone else, hoping for some excitement.

"Aw, come on," The guy said, hoisting the thing over his head. It looked like a wooden beam, pointed at one end. "It's part of my costume,"

The bouncer raised an eyebrow, "Which is what?"

The guy grinned; she was normal looking enough, Lucy thought, for Pandemonium. He had electric blue dyed hair that stuck up around his head like the tendrils of a startled octopus, but no elaborate facial tattoos or big metal bars through his ears or lips. "I'm a vampire hunter," He pushed down the wooden thing, it bent as easily as a blade of grass in the wind. "It's fake. Foam rubber, see?"

The guy's wide eyes were way to bright a green, Lucy noticed; like the color of antifreeze, spring grass. Color contact lenses, probably. The bouncer shrugged, abruptly bored, "Whatever. Go on in."

The guy slid past him, quick as an eel. Lucy liked the lilt to his shoulders, the way he tossed his hair as he went. There was a word for him that her mother would have used –insolent.

"You thought he was cute," said Natsu, sounding resigned. "Didn't you?"

Lucy dug her elbow into his ribs, softly, but didn't answer.

Inside, the club was full of dry-ice smoke. Colored lights played over the dance floor, turning it into a multicolored fairyland of blues and acid greens, hot pinks and golds.

The guy in the red jacket stroked the long razor-sharp blade in his hands, an idle smile playing over his lips. It had been so easy—a little bit of a glamour on the blade, to make it look harmless. Another glamour on his eyes, and the moment the bouncer had looked straight at him, he was in. Of course, he could probably have gotten by without all that trouble, but it was part of the fun—fooling the mundies doing it all out in the open right in front of them, getting off on the blank looks on their sheep-like faces.

Not that the humans didn't have their uses. The guy's green eyes scanned the dance floor, where slender limbs clad in scraps of silk and black leather appeared and disappeared inside the revolving columns of smoke as the mundies danced. Girls tossed their long hair, boys swung their leather-clad hips, and bare skin glittered with sweat. His hand tightened on the blade he carried, and he had begun to step out onto the dance floor when a girl broke away from the mass of dancers and began walking toward him. He stared at her. She was beautiful, for a human—long-ish hair nearly the precise color of quick silver, bright eyes. A white dress hung loosely to her slender built frame, the ones that girls used to wear when the world was young, to cover most if not all of their skin. Around her neck was a thick silver chain, on which hung a dark red pendant the size of a baby's fist.

He only had to narrow his eyes to know that it was real—real and precious. His mouth started to water as she neared him. Vital energy pulsed from her like blood from an open wound. She smiled, passing him, beckoning with her eyes. He turned to follow her, tasting the phantom sizzle of her death on her lips. It was always easy. He could already feel the power of her evaporating life coursing through his veins like fire. Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile. The girl was a pale ghost retreating through the colored smoke. She reached the wall and turned, bunching her dress up in her hands, lifting it as she grinned at him. Under the dress, she wore tall black boots.

He sauntered up to her, his skin prickling with her nearness. Up close she wasn't so perfect: she could see the dark mascara smudges under her eyes, the sweat sticking from her hair to her neck. He could smell her mortality, the sweet rot of corruption. Got you, he thought.

A cool smile curled her lips. She moved to the side, and he could see that she was leaning against a closed door, no admittance—storage was scrawled across it in red paint. She reached behind him for the knob, turned it, slid inside. He caught a glimpse of stacked boxes, tangled wiring. A storage room. The blue haired boy glanced behind him—no one was looking. So much the better if she wanted privacy.

He slipped into the room after her, unaware that he was being followed.

* * *

**So, I've decided to take one of my favorite books, which happens to be The Mortal Instruments and switched the characters with that of Fairy Tail's, 'cause I was thinking, '****_How cool would it be if Fairy Tail was in TMI? How much chaos would in sue?' _****So here's what I came up with. Hope you like it. **

**~Believe in the Unknown (aka H8rslovemecauseI'mawesome)**


	2. Chapter 2

**No One's POV**

"So," Natsu said, "pretty good music, eh?"

Lucy didn't reply. They were dancing, or what passed for it— a lot of swaying back and forth with occasional lunges toward the floor as if one of them had dropped a contact lens—in a space between a group of teenage boys in metallic corsets, and a young Asian couple who were making out passionately, their colored hair extensions tangled together like vines.

A boy with a lip piercing and a teddy bear backpack was handing out free tablets of herbal ecstasy, his parachute pants flapping in the breeze from the wind machine. Lucy wasn't paying much attention to their immediate surroundings—her eyes were on the blue-haired guy who'd talked his way into the club. He was prowling through the crowd as if he were looking for something. There was something about the way he moved that reminded her of something…

"I, for one," Natsu went on, "am enjoying myself immensely."

This seemed unlikely. Natsu, as always, stuck out at the club like a sore thumb, in jeans and an old T -shirt that said made in Brooklyn across the front. His freshly scrubbed hair was dark pink instead of green or blue, and his glasses perched crookedly on the end of his nose. He looked less as if he were contemplating the powers of darkness and more as if he were on his way to chess club.

"Mmm-hmm."Lucy knew perfectly well that he came to Pandemonium with her only because she liked it, that he thought it was boring. She wasn't even sure why it was that she liked it—the clothes, the music made it like a dream, someone else's life, not her boring real life at all. But she was always too shy to talk to anyone but natsu. The blue-haired guy was making his way off the dance floor. He looked a little lost, as if he hadn't found whom he was looking for. Lucy wondered what would happen if she went up and introduced herself, offered to show him around. Maybe he'd just stare at her. Or maybe he was shy too. Maybe he'd be grateful and pleased, and try not to show it, the way guy's did—but she'd know. Maybe—

The blue-haired guy straightened up suddenly, snapping to attention, like a hunting dog on point. Lucy followed the line of his gaze, and saw the girl in the white dress.

Oh, well, Lucy thought, trying not to feel like a deflated party balloon. I guess that's that. The girl was gorgeous; the kind of girl Lucy would have liked to draw—tall and slim, with a long-ish spill of silver hair.

Even at this distance Lucy could see the red pendant around her throat. It pulsed under the lights of the dance floor like a separate, disembodied heart.

"I feel," Natsu went on, "that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don't you agree?"

Lucy rolled her eyes and didn't answer; Natsu hated trance music. Her attention was on the girl in the white dress. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, her pale dress shone out like a beacon. No wonder the blue-haired guy was following her as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him—even the two dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after his through the crowd.

Lucy slowed her dancing and stared. She could just make out that the shapes were guys, tall and wearing black clothes.

She couldn't have said how she knew that they were following the other guy, but she did. She could see it in the way they paced him, their careful watchfulness, the slinking grace of their movements. A small flower of apprehension began to open inside her chest.

"Meanwhile," Natsu added, "I wanted to tell you that lately I've been cross-dressing. Also, I'm sleeping with your mom. I thought you should know."

The girl had reached the wall, and was opening a door marked no admittance. She beckoned the blue-haired guy after her, and they slipped through the door. It wasn't anything Lucy hadn't seen before, a couple sneaking off to the dark corners of the club to make out—but that made it even weirder that they were being followed.

She raised herself up on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd. The two guys had stopped at the door and seemed to be conferring with each other. One of them was blonde, the other dark-haired. The blond one reached into his jacket and drew out something long and sharp that flashed under the strobbing lights. A knife.

"Natsu!" Lucy shouted, and seized his arm.

"What?" Natsu looked alarmed. "I'm not really sleeping with your dad, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your dad isn't a very attractive man, for his age."

"Do you see those guys?" She pointed wildly, almost hitting a curvy black girl who was dancing nearby. The girl shot her an evil look. "Sorry—sorry!" Lucy turned back to Natsu. "Do you see those two guys over there? By that door?"

Natsu squinted, then shrugged. "I don't see anything."

"There are two of them. They were following the guy with the blue hair—"

"The one you thought was cute?"

"Yes, but that's not the point. The blond one pulled a knife."

"Are you sure?" Natsu stared harder, shaking his head. "I still don't see anyone."

"I'm sure."

Suddenly all business, Natsu squared his shoulders. "I'll get one of the security guards. You stay here." He strode away, pushing through the crowd.

Lucy turned just in time to see the blond guy slip through the no admittance door, his friend right on his heels. She looked around; Lucy was still trying to shove her way across the dance floor, but she wasn't making much progress. Even if she yelled now, no one would hear her, and by the time Natsu got back, something terrible might already have happened. Biting hard on her lower lip, Lucy started to wriggle through the crowd.


	3. Chapter 3

**No One's POV (A/N I know it's confusing, but bear with me until I can change POV's)**

* * *

"What's your name?"

The light haired girl turned and smiled. What faint light there was in the storage room spilled down through high barred windows smeared with dirt. Piles of electrical cables, along with broken bits of mirrored disco balls and discarded paint cans littered the floor.

"Lisanna."

"That's a nice name." He walked toward her, stepping carefully among the wires in case any of them were live. In the faint light she looked half-transparent, bleached of color, wrapped in white like an angel. It would be _a pleasure_ to make her _fall_…"I haven't seen you here before." the blue haired guy continued.

"You're asking me if I come here often?" She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. There was some sort of bracelet around her wrist, just under the cuff of her dress—then, as he neared her, he saw that it wasn't a bracelet at all but a pattern inked into her skin, a matrix of swirling lines.

He froze. "You—"

He didn't finish. She moved with lightning swiftness, striking out at him with her open hand, a blow to his chest that would have sent him down gasping if he'd been a human being. He staggered back, and now there was something in her hand, a coiling whip that glinted gold as she brought it down, curling around his ankles, jerking him off his feet. He hit the ground, writhing, the hated metal biting deep into his skin. She laughed, standing over him, and dizzily he thought that he should have known. No human girl would wear a dress like the one Lisanna wore. She'd worn it to cover her skin—all of her skin.

Lisanna yanked hard on the whip, securing it. Her smile glittered like poisonous water. "He's all yours, boys."

A low laugh sounded behind him, and now there were hands on him, hauling him upright, throwing him against one of the concrete pillars; he could feel the damp stone under his back. His hands were pulled behind him, his wrists bound with wire. As he struggled, someone walked around the side of the pillar into his view: a guy, as young as Lisanna and just as pretty.

His tawny eyes glittered like chips of brown amber. "So," the golden boy said. "Are there any more with you?"

The blue-haired boy could feel blood welling up under the too-tight metal, making his wrists slippery. "Any other what?"

"Come on now." The tawny-eyed boy held up his hands, and his dark sleeves slipped down, showing the runes inked all over his wrists, the backs of his hands, his palms. "You know what I am."

Far back inside his skull, the shackled boy's second set of teeth began to grind. "Shadowhunter," he hissed.

The other boy grinned all over his face. "Got you," she said.

* * *

Lucy pushed the door to the storage room open, and stepped inside. For a moment she thought it was deserted. The only windows were high up and barred; faint street noise came through them, the sound of honking cars and squealing brakes. The room smelled like old paint, and a heavy layer of dust covered the floor, marked by smeared shoe prints.

There's no one in here, she realized, looking around in bewilderment. It was cold in the room, despite the August heat outside. Her back was icy with sweat. She took a step forward, tangling her feet in electrical wires. She bent down to free her sneaker from the cables—and heard voices. A girl's giggle, a boys's answering sharply. When she straightened up, she saw them.

It was as if they had sprung into existence between one blink of her eyes and the next. There was the girl in her long white dress, her silver hair hanging slightly down her back like damp seaweed. The two boys were with her—the tall one with green hair, and the taller, fair one, whose hair gleamed like brass in the dim light coming through the windows high above. The fair boy was standing with his hands in his pockets, facing the punk kid, who was tied to a pillar with what looked like piano wire, his hands stretched behind him, his legs bound at the ankles. His face was pulled tight with pain and fear.

Heart hammering in her chest, Lucy ducked behind the nearest concrete pillar and peered around it. She watched as the fair-haired boy paced back and forth, his arms now crossed over his chest. "So," he said. "You still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you."

_Your kind?_ Lucy wondered what the fair boy was talking about. Maybe she'd stumbled into some kind of gang war.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The blue-haired boy's tone was pained but surly.

"He means other demons," said the green-haired boy, speaking for the first time. "You do know what a demon is, don't you?" The boy tied to the pillar turned his face away, his mouth working.

"Demons," drawled the blond boy, tracing the word on the air with his finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension—"

"That's enough, Laxus," said the green haired boy.

"Freed's right," agreed the light haired girl. "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics—or demonology."

_They're crazy_, Lucy thought. _Actually crazy._

Laxus raised his head and smiled. There was something fierce about the gesture, something that reminded Lucy of documentaries she'd watched about lions on the Discovery Channel, the way the big cats would raise their heads and sniff the air for prey.

"Freed and Lisanna think I talk too much," he said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?"

The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information," he said. "I know where Arcnologia is."

Laxus glanced back at Freed, who shrugged. "Arcnologia's in the ground," Laxus said. "The thing's just toying with us."

Lisanna tossed her hair. "Kill it, Laxus," she said. "It's not going to tell us anything."

Laxus raised his hand, and Lucy saw dim light spark off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones.

The bound boy gasped. "Arcnologia is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it—I know it—I can tell you where he is—"

Rage flared suddenly in Laxus' icy eyes. "By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Arcnologia is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you—" Laxus turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there."

Lucy could take no more. She stepped out from behind the pillar. "Stop!" she cried. "You can't do this."

* * *

**For those of you reading this, you should know a couple things. 1) Freed and Lisanna are not related, but have a sibling relationship. 2) Even though in the books, Alec, played by Freed, is gay, Freed is not, well not entirely. He will still have a crush on Laxus. 3) I know that Arcnologia isn't the best person (dragon) to play Lucy's father, but that's one of the twists in this story. So please stay turned for what i have next.**


	4. Chapter 4

**No One's POV**

* * *

Lucy whirled, so startled that the knife flew from her hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Gray and Erza turned along with her, wearing identical expressions of astonishment. The blue-haired girl hung in his bonds, stunned and gaping.

It was Erza who spoke first. "What's this?" she demanded, looking from Natsu to her companions, as if they might know what he was doing there.

"It's a guy," Lucy said, recovering her composure. "Surely you've seen guys before, Cana. Your brother Gray is one."

She took a step closer to Natsu, squinting as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. "A mundie guy," she said, half to herself. "And she can see us."

"Of course I can see you," Natsu said. "I'm not blind, you know."

"Oh, but you are," said Lucy, bending to pick up her knife. "You just don't know it." She straightened up. "You'd better get out of here, if you know what's good for you."

"I'm not going anywhere," Natsu said. "If I do, you'll kill her." He pointed at the girl with the blue hair.

"That's true," admitted Lucy, twirling the knife between her fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?"

"Be-because—," Natsu spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people."

"You're right," said Lucy. "You can't go around killing people." She pointed at the girl with blue hair, whose eyes were slitted. Natsu wondered if she'd fainted. "That's not a person, big boy. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster."

"Lucy," said Gray warningly. "That's enough."

"You're crazy," Natsu said, backing away from her. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second."

"He's lying," said Erza, but there was doubt on her face. "Lucy, do you—"

She never got to finish her sentence. At that moment the blue-haired girl, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding her to the pillar, and flung herself on Lucy.

They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue -haired girl tearing at Lucy with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Natsu backed up, wanting to run, but his feet caught on a loop of wiring and he went down, knocking the breath out of his chest. He could hear Gray yelling. Rolling over, Natsu saw the blue-haired girl sitting on Lucy's chest. Blood gleamed at the tips of her razor like claws.

Gray and Erza were running toward them, Gray brandishing a whip in his hand. The blue-haired girl slashed at Lucy with claws extended. Lucy threw an arm up to protect herself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The blue-haired girl lunged again—and Gray's whip came down across her back. She shrieked and fell to the side.

Swift as a flick of Gray's whip, Lucy rolled over. There was a blade gleaming in her hand. She sank the knife into the blue haired girl's chest. Blackish liquid exploded around the hilt. The girl arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting. With a grimace Lucy stood up. Her black shirt was blacker now in some places, wet with blood. She looked down at the twitching form at her feet, reached down, and yanked out the knife. The hilt was slick with black fluid.

The blue-haired girl's eyes flickered open. Her eyes, fixed on Lucy, seemed to burn. Between her teeth, she hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all."

Lucy seemed to snarl. The girl's eyes rolled back. Her body began to jerk and twitch as she crumpled, folding in on herself, growing smaller and smaller until she vanished entirely.

Natsu scrambled to his feet, kicking free of the electrical wiring. He began to back away. None of them was paying attention to him. Erza had reached Lucy and was holding her arm, pulling at the sleeve, probably trying to get a good look at the wound. Natsu turned to run—and found his way blocked by Gray, whip in hand. The gold length of it was stained with dark fluid. He flicked it toward Natsu, and the end wrapped itself around his wrist and jerked tight. Natsu gasped with pain and surprise.

"Stupid little mundie," Gray said between his teeth. "You could have gotten Jace killed."

"She's crazy," Natsu said, trying to pull his wrist back. The whip bit deeper into his skin. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police—"

"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," said Lucy. Cradling her arm, she picked her way across the cable-strewn floor toward Natsu. Erza followed behind her, face screwed into a scowl.

Natsu glanced at the spot where the girl had disappeared from, and said nothing. There wasn't even a smear of blood there—nothing to show that the girl had ever existed.

"They return to their home dimensions when they die," Lucy commented. "In case you were wondering."

"Lucy," Erza hissed. "Be careful."

Lucy drew her arm away. A ghoulish freckling of blood marked her face. She still reminded him of a lion, with her wide - spaced, light-colored eyes, and that tawny gold hair. "He can see us, Erza," she said. "He already knows too much."

"So what do you want me to do with him?" Gray demanded.

"Let him go," Lucy said quietly. Gray shot her a surprised, almost angry look, but didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing Natsu's arm. He rubbed his sore wrist and wondered how the hell he was going to get out of there.

"Maybe we should bring him back with us," Erza said. "I bet Ivan would like to talk to him."

"No way are we bringing him to the Institute," said Gray. "He's a mundie."

"Or is he?" said Lucy softly. Her quiet tone was worse than Gray's snapping or Erza's anger. "Have you had dealings with demons, big boy? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you—"

"My name is not 'bog boy,'" Natsu interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about." _Don't you? _said a voice in the back of his head. _You_ _saw that boy vanish into thin air. Jace isn't crazy—you just wish he was._ "I don't believe in—in demons, or whatever you—"

"Natsu?" It was Lisanna's voice. He whirled around. She was standing by the storage room door. One of the burly bouncers who'd been stamping hands at the front door was next to her. "Are you okay?" She peered at him through the gloom. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys—you know the ones with the knives?"

Natsu stared at her, then looked behind him, where Lucy, Gray, and Erza stood; Lucy still in her bloody shirt with the knife in her hand. She grinned at him and dropped a half -apologetic, half-mocking shrug. Clearly she wasn't surprised that neither Lisanna nor the bouncer could see them. Somehow neither was Natsu. Slowly he turned back to Lisanna, knowing how he must look to her, standing alone in a damp storage room, his feet tangled in bright plastic wiring cables.

"I thought they went in here," he said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." He glanced from Lisanna, whose expression was changing from worried to embarrassed, to the bouncer, who just looked annoyed. "It was a mistake."

Behind him, Gray chuckled, sarcastically.

"I don't believe it," Lisanna said stubbornly as Natsu, standing at the curb, tried desperately to hail a cab.

Street cleaners had come down Orchard while they were inside the club, and the street was glossed black with oily water.

"I know," he agreed. "You'd think there'd be some cabs. Where is everyone going at midnight on a Sunday?" He turned back to her, shrugging. "You think we'd have better luck on Houston?"

"Not the cabs," Lisanna said. "You—I don't believe you. I don't believe those guys with the knives just disappeared."

Natsu sighed. "Maybe there weren't any guys with knives, Lisanna. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing."

"No way." Lisanna raised her hand over her head, but the oncoming taxis whizzed by her, spraying dirty water. "I saw your face when I came into that storage room. You looked seriously freaked out, like you'd seen a ghost."

Natsu thought of Lucy with her lion-cat eyes. He glanced down at his wrist, braceleted by a thin red line where Gray's whip had curled. _No, not a ghost_, he thought. _Something even weirder than that._

"It was just a mistake," He said wearily. He wondered why he wasn't telling her the truth. Except, of course, that she'd think he was crazy. And there was something about what had happened—something about the black blood bubbling up around Lucy's knife, something about her voice when she'd said 'Have you talked with the Night Children?' that he wanted to keep to himself.

"Well, it was a hell of an embarrassing mistake," Lisanna said. She glanced back at the club, where a thin line still snaked out the door and halfway down the block. "I doubt they'll ever let us back into Pandemonium."

"What do you care? You hate Pandemonium." Natsu raised his hand again as a yellow shape sped toward them through the fog. This time, though, the taxi screeched to a halt at their corner, the driver laying into his horn as if he needed to get their attention.

"Finally we get lucky." Lisanna yanked the taxi door open and slid onto the plastic -covered backseat. Natsu followed, inhaling the familiar New York cab smell of old cigarette smoke, leather, and hair spray.

"We're going to Brooklyn," Lisanna said to the cabbie, and then she turned to Natsu. "Look, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

Natsu hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Sure, Lisanna," he said. "I know I can."

He slammed the cab door shut behind him, and the taxi took off into the night.


End file.
